Mincemeat
by MiwAuturu
Summary: Nick and Judy end up on the late shift in a bad part of town and stumble across something horrifying, leading them into a new case they must solve.
1. The discovery

_I had this horrible idea for a Zootopia fanfiction, comes from my time working as a Conservation Officer where I discovered something very similar to what the ZPD does in here. Of course in real life it was more of a slightly gross curiosity than a complete horror. Just one chapter right now, might be interesting to expand it further into an actual series, but right now I have no idea where I would actually take it. Also this is the first time I've actually written fiction in about two years, so I'm probably horribly rusty. OH WELL HERE GOES NOTHING._

* * *

Judy pulled to a stop at the light, grabbing her coffee cup and downing the few mouthfuls left. She had been drinking it slowly enough that it had gone cold, and she just wanted to finish it. Normally she stayed away from the stuff, too bitter. Besides, she seemed to have enough natural energy to get by without it. Tonight was a little different though. She and Nick were stuck having to pull an extra shift, taking over for a couple of officers on vacation.

She frowned looking over at her partner, realizing that he had managed to fall asleep, leaned back in his seat, mouth hanging half open. It annoyed her a little bit that he got to sleep when she didn't, but she let him do it anyways, figuring if anything actually happened he would wake up. Her eyes flicked back to the road as the light turned green, easing the massive police vehicle forwards, eyes flicking around the road.

They were passing through a seedier part of town, nightclubs and bars. With the cars windows open, she could occasionally hear thumping bass as she drove by one. It was still a couple of hours before any of them let out for the night though, so most animals were in the clubs themselves. Occasionally she passed a group out smoking or chatting in the cool night air, and she slowed to take a look, letting them know cops were around.

A sudden flash of movement ahead caught her eye, a racoon darting out from around a corner, leaning up against a lamppost and hurling. Not an entirely uncommon occurence this part of the city, but usually it wasn't followed with trying to flag down a police cruiser. As she pulled to the side, she reached over a shook Nick.

The red fox stirred, looking around and realizing where he was.

"Oh, sorry Carrots, didn't realize I fell asleep there." His voice interrupted with a big yawn as the vehicle stopped. "Wasn't out too long I hope. Something up?"

"Not sure yet. The raccoon in front of us was waving us down. Didn't want to go out in this part of town without my backup."

She put the car in park, pulling out the keys and attaching them to her belt before hopping out, Nick doing the same on his side. They were still a few meters behind the raccoon, who was still leaned up against the lamppost.

He suddenly looked up at the two officers, pale as a ghost and seeming just about ready to throw up a second time.

"O-o-officers! The alleyway! There's- oh God."

He turned away from them, dry heaving a few times before managing another stream of vomit, leaning hard against the lamppost for support, before slowly starting to slide down it. Judy just realized in time that he had passed out, catching him and keeping him from falling over and cracking his head against the pave and, with Nick's help, lay him out carefully on the pave.

"Nick, call this in. I'm going to go check out what it was that he was talking about in the alley."

Nick looked between the raccoon, Judy and the dark alleyway before shaking his head.

"Oh no, Carrots. I am not letting you go in there alone, we have no idea what this is. It could be some kind of trap. I'm watching your back."

As the two officers carefully approached the alleyway, she could see some kind of mass in front of her, but couldn't make out what it was at first. She pulled out her phone to use as a flashlight. As soon as it lit up the alleyway she felt the blood drain from her face. The mass was a body, or at least it was parts of one. A pile of organs and bones that looked like it had been dumped there by someone.

She heard Nick gasp behind her as she took another step forwards, trying to take it as many details as possible. A ribcage belonging to a large animal, then antlers came into view, so probably a moose. Then her light caught pale skin. A foot. A pig's hoof. When she realized there were at least two animals dead and piled together in an unidentifiable mess she lost it, leaning to the side, away from the bodies, her carrot-orange puke spilling out onto the concrete. She had never seen any of the feral mauling victims, only pictures, but even those were nowhere near as horrific as what she was seeing now.

She felt Nick's hand on her back, tugging her back towards the patrol vehicle.

"Come on Judy, you need to be strong right now. Get it together, we need to go call this in, right now."

She nodded, taking a few deep breaths to try and calm herself, she let Nick help her back to the car, getting into the passenger's side as Nick picked up the radio and called in the scene they had just encountered.


	2. The case

_Driving for 6-8 hours a day is a wonderful way to find time to just think. So now I actually (mostly) know where I'm going with this story, yay! Not sure when the next one will come out. (Edited to fix some spelling mistakes)_

* * *

The next few minutes seemed to Judy both to pass by in a flash, and yet still last forever. She could hear Nick calling on the radio next to her, but she wasn't processing it in her mind. A sudden touch on her shoulder jolted her back to reality, looking towards Nick, whose hand was on her shoulder. Apparently something in her eyes made him flinch back briefly, before he gripped her tighter.

"No," she thought to herself, turning her head down towards the ground and closing her eyes. She was an officer of the ZPD, and this was her first big case since the Nighthowlers. This would not be what broke her. Taking a few deep breaths and mentally steeling herself she looked back at Nick, fresh determination on her face.

It was just then that flashing lights appeared behind them. Their backup had arrived. Before Nick could even say anything, Judy was out the door to greet them, apparently having the spring back in her step.

The next hour or so felt like a blur to Judy, but it kept her busy and her mind occupied. The club next to the alleyway had to be shut down for the night, the alley itself cordoned off, and prepared for the CSI crew to arrive. Nobody was happy about the situation, but Judy felt highly embarrassed that none of the officers had the same kind of visceral reaction as she had, although they would have been forewarned about the situation before arriving.

Soon the CSI crew had arrived are were doing their job, at which point Judy and Nick were told quite firmly by Bogo to end their shift early, go home and get some sleep, and to not bother coming in to roll call the next day. Instead, they should head straight for his office.

Judy barely slept. The events of the night rolling repeatedly through her head as she tossed and turned in her little cot. What she had seen was horrible, and it made her feel sick, but what twisted her most was her reaction to it, how she had lost her cool on the job. Pilings on to her worries was the guilt that she should be less concerned about herself and more about what she had seen. She found herself still wide awake when her alarm went off the next morning, dragging herself out of bed and into her uniform without any of her usual speed and excitement.

As Judy arrived at the precinct, she was determined not to let show just how mentally and physically exhausted she was. Looking up, she was surprised to see Nick already waiting for her next to the door, two Snarlbucks cups in hand. He looked about as tired as she felt, and she was pretty sure neither of them had gotten any sleep. As she got close to him, he handed her one of the cups before she could say anything.

"Caramel-carrot cappuccino. Figured after last night you'd need something to keep you going, and I know you don't like coffee, so I got you something sweet. Even had time to cool off a little bit first so you can drink it right away."

Judy managed a thin smile up at Nick, even with all the chaos in the world, she could at least depend on her partner having her back.

"Thanks, Nick. You don't know how much I needed this."

"I think I do, Fluff. And no problem."

Nick pushed the door open, letting Judy in first, sliding in step behind her afterwards. They walked in silence to Bogo's officer. Neither seemed much interested in being their usual chatty selves, just sipping drinks as they waited. Eventually it came upon Nick to break the silence.

"So, you're sure you want to pursue this one, Carrots?"

"Yeah." Judy didn't look up as she spoke, but the tone of her voice implied certainty. "I lost my nerve last night seeing, well, what we saw. It won't happen again though. I'm here to make the world a better place after all. I'd understand if you weren't up to it though. What was done to those corpses, it was dark."

Nick slid his back down the wall so he was crouched at Judy's level. "What, and leave you to do this alone? Make Bogo assign you a new partner? Nah, Carrots, you're stuck with me."

He ruffled the fur between her ears, earning himself a punch to the shoulder, falling back excessively dramatically before getting back up, chuckling. He was glad to see he managed to get Judy to smile too, both relieved to have a little bit of normal behavior to relieve a little bit of their stress.

It couldn't last though, Bogo, having finally finishing up assigning duties for the day, walked past, unlocking his office door and signaling with his head for both of them to follow him in. He took a seat at his desk, Nick and Judy following suit across from him. A tense, but brief silence followed, broken when Bogo sighed, placing his glasses on the desk, he seemed like he was about to speak, but Judy headed him off.

"Sir, I want to be put on this case."

That got the Chief to lift his head up, an eyebrow raised at the rabbit.

"That comes as somewhat of a surprise, considering what I had heard from other officers on the scene about your reaction. Frankly right now I should be putting you on administrative leave right now. You witnessed something traumatic, and had a bad reaction. There are policies in place for this."

"And you wouldn't be telling us this if you didn't plan on going against those policies, would you?" Nick suddenly interjected.

Bogo leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms and staring down both the two sitting across from him. Both were good officers, at least Hopps was, and Wilde was quickly proving himself able to keep up with her. He was worried about both of them though, he had seen what burnout could do to someone so eager to prove themselves.

"Fine." He finally spoke again "You're right. I won't turn you down if you're so certain. But after this you are both going to go to a proper debriefing. Psychological evaluation included."

He prayed he had made the right decision as he watched them. Judy perking up and Nick, he seemed too good at hiding what he was feeling. That concerned him.

"Normally I would let Clawhauser give you the file, but I'd rather the details of this particular case not end up the office rumors. The media are already hounding us about this, and it's only been a day."

Judy frowned at that a little bit "Already? It took multiple disappearances before anyone jumped in during the Nighthowler case. And murders aren't uncommon in such a large city. Is it just the gruesome nature?"

"That's part of it. The other part is the raccoon witness. His name is Dipper Varas, he works behind the scenes for ZNN. As soon as he was released, he went straight to his bosses with everything he knew. Now they're jumping down our throats, wondering if someone new might be using the Nighthowlers. That much gore, they figured it had to be someone savage."

This time Bogo looked at Nick, waiting for the interruption that he suspected was about to come. Instead the fox just sat there straight-faced, giving Judy a chance to speak.

"So you're saying it isn't?"

"Preliminary reports from CSI and the lab say no. This was done too cleanly. It was an intentional act. Knives were used to cut up the bodies- two of them, you were right initially. There seems to be a lot missing though."

Judy seemed to green up a little bit at the talk, the possible implications for missing parts coming to her, but she managed to hold herself together. Nick if anything just made himself even more neutral.

"At the moment" Bogo continued "We don't have a lot to go on right now, so this case is going to be your top priority. For now, you're both dismissed."

Nick and Judy got and started heading to the door, but before they left, Bogo had one more word to get in.

"And for God's sake, both of you had better get some sleep tonight."


	3. The Investigation Starts

_Third chapter out. Still driving 8 hours a day, not much time to write, lots of time to think though._

* * *

Nick and Judy sat in their patrol vehicle after their meeting with Bogo, still parked in the precinct lot. Nick was taking a turn in the driver's seat so that Judy could look over what they had in the file. She quickly flipped past the pictures of the crime scene, to find that the file was, as Bogo had implied, annoyingly thin beyond it. Little was in there besides what they had already been explained.

"So," Nick finally spoke up "Where am I taking us first?"

"Well, the club-" Judy quickly looked through the file "The… Cat's Meow? You ever heard of it Nick?"

Judy made a quick sidelong glance at her partner, turning back to the files before realizing he had a strange grin on his face, making her turn back towards him.

"I can't say that I'm familiar with the place, Carrots."

"Nick, why are you lying to me?"

Nick put his hand on his heart, feigning pain as he turned towards Judy, his tone overly dramatic "Carrots! How could you accuse me of such a thing? I would never lie to you!"

The two had a brief stare down, a smug grin on Nick's face that worried Judy, but she knew when he got like this, she wasn't going to get anything out of him. Frankly, she was even kind of glad for how normal he was acting.

"Right." she finally continued "As I was going to say, the club is probably going to be closed this time of day, so we'll need to wait until later if we want to look over their security footage, which leaves Mr. Varas as our only lead so far."

"Which means going to find him at work at ZNN right? Didn't Bogo tell you pretty clearly that you're to let media relations talk to the media now?"

"We're going there to talk to our witness, not the reporters, Nick."

"So we're walking into a lion's den to interview one of them, and hoping the rest don't try and eat us alive."

"Okay, now you're really being overdramatic, Nick."

Nick started the truck, pulling out of the parking lot, since they had a destination in mind now.

"Whatever you say, Carrots, just don't accidentally let anything slip. This guy's already brought too much media attention to the case."

Judy just replied with an "Mhmm" as the car started to move, putting the now very cold half of her drink into the cup holder and leaning back in her seat. She jerked back up, almost to the point of falling out of her seat about ten minutes later, Nick just about swerving the car to the side at the sudden motion.

"Ack! Carrots, don't do that when I'm driving!"

She quickly reached for the Snarlbucks cup she had put down, drinking a big gulp of the sweet, carrot flavored drink before answering, seeming heavily embarrassed by her jump

"Sorry, the car must have hit a bump or something, woke me up with a start."

Nick gave her a quick glance, unable to take his eyes of the road for very long. Just from his look though, it was pretty clear he didn't buy her excuse for waking up just such a jump. He didn't argue with her any though.

"Well, it's a good thing you're awake now. We're almost there."

The rest of the ride was mostly filled with a slightly awkward silence, Judy quickly finishing her drink to try and keep herself alert, while Nick kept his eyes on the road, stealing the occasional glance at his bunny partner. Soon they reached a large building downtown, "ZNN" emblazoned on the side of it in large lettering. Nick parked after finding himself a spot in the parking lot large enough for the police cruiser.

Both of them headed in through the main door, finding a large open atrium meant to accommodate any visitors. A lynx in a security uniform stood next to the door, watching the two officers come in, and nearby a hare receptionist was busy typing something on her computer.

Nick and Judy walked over to the receptionist, who looked up and smiled at them.

"Hello, how can I help you today?"

Judy spoke up, pulling out her badge "Hello, we're officers-"

The hare quickly cut her off "Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. It would be hard to work here without knowing about the two officers who solved the Nighthowlers case. Oh! You're not here to give an interview about the new case are you? I know someone who would be really interested!"

Nick hopped in before anything could be set up "No thanks. We're just here to speak with one Dipper Varas."

The secretary perked up excitedly for a second before her ears drooped. "Oh. _Mr._ Varas. Third floor, follow the corridor to your left, his office is labelled. Security'll buzz you into the elevator."

The two officers thanked the secretary and went on their way, getting the lynx in the corner to open up the elevator for them, they headed up to the third floor, finding the office easily and knocking. From inside a voice called

"Who is it?"

Judy was again quick to identify "Officers Hopps and Wilde. We met last night. We need to ask you a few questions about what you saw."

Muffled curses responded first, before a female voice called back "Come on in." This followed by muffled arguing, which immediately stopped when the door opened. Inside were two raccoons, Dipper was in blue overalls, but a woman in a nice suit was with him.

Dipper quickly turned towards the two officers "Look, I was really drunk last night, I walked into the alleyway, I saw exactly what you two would have seen, and you know what came after that. There's really nothing that I can tell you that you don't already know. At this point I would much rather forget it all happened and move on with my life. Hell, I don't even have to speak to you, I'm a witness, not a suspect, and I have work to do, so I will be going to do it now. Good day."

He quickly shoved past the two officers, Nick indicated to Judy that she should follow him. He was right that they didn't have any cause to hold him at the time, but Nick remembered that not stopping her in the past. That left him in the office with the other raccoon, who quickly introduced herself.

"Nicholas Wilde, correct?"

"Seems everyone in here _has_ heard of me then. And who might I be addressing?'

She offered her hand, which Nick quickly took "Amandine Varas, I'm Dipper's younger sister, interning here, hope to work here someday."

"Going to work behind the scenes like your big brother then?"

"No, I want to be a journalist. I want to go out there and collect the stories for the ZNN to report on."

"Raccoon journalist huh? You're going to have some trouble getting people to trust you then. You remind me of Carrots though, reaching out beyond what people say you should be. Maybe it should be her you're talking to. Good luck with that though."

Amandine just smiled at Nick before waving him off "Oh, I don't think it will be too hard. I just need to find one good story, once you have a name for yourself, it seems like people will forget all about who you might have been in your past."

Nick paused, sizing her up a few times before turning around "Well, I should really be catching up with my partner. We have a busy day, and a big investigation to be working on. You have a good one."

She grabbed his arm quickly, looking up at him "You sure you can't share any details about the case before you go? It would really help me along, not even a little bit?"

Pulling his arm free from her grasp, Nick shook his head "Nope, sorry. Might end up rooting for you, but I would be in a whole world of trouble if I went around blabbering cop secrets."

Slipping out of the office, Nick headed back towards the direction of the elevator, only to find Judy already waiting for him there.

"That was quick, you get anything out of Dips?"

"Nah, he managed to slip away somehow, must have been as soon as he was out his door. Security isn't keen on us looking around too much, and frankly, I'd much rather we stick purely by the book, hanging around in a newsroom. How about the girl? Who was she? Did she know anything?"

"She was his sister, Almonds."

"Almonds? Normally your nicknames are a little more on the nose than that."

"Well, her name was Amandine, figured it worked. I have the distinct feeling she knows more than I would like her to after our conversation. Like I was hustled somehow, but I can't figure what she might have gotten out of me. I didn't say a word about the case."


	4. The club

This chapter gave me way too much trouble, and I'm still not sure I am 100% happy with it, but at this point I'd rather just get it out into the world and keep moving along. Next one should be fun to write, but I am not sure how much time I'll have to do so. Update will be whenever I have the chance basically. Also I changed the name. Was never very happy with the old one.

* * *

Nick and Judy both felt like they had a rather unproductive day of investigation, however with the Cat's Meow opening soon, and Judy with a warrant in hand, they figured they might just have some luck yet before they called it a night. As they headed towards the door, Judy glanced down the alleyway. It looked incredibly clean compared to the previous night, still some dark red stains against the concrete that hadn't washed out, but no more obvious gore.

The two headed to the main entrance to the club, knocking heavily on the old steel door. From inside a deep voiced answered

"We're closed! Come back in an hour!"

"ZPD!" Judy quickly replied "We have a warrant to go over your security tapes, open up!"

The sound of a lock being undone was followed by the door sliding open, a large grey rhino pulling himself out of a chair to be able to fully open it.

"Yeah, yeah, alright, should have seen this coming. Just show me the warrant."

Sliding in front of Nick, Judy slipped out the signed and approved warrant, showing it to the rhino, who quickly read it over.

"Just have permission to look over the tapes then. Alright, seems fair. Follow me to the basement, the tapes'n'stuff are all down in the security room."

He slid aside to let the two cops in, shutting the door behind them, locking it again before cautiously stepping around the officers, heading into the club proper.

Inside the club was a series of circular stages of all different sizes, each having their own proportionally sized pole sticking out of them and connecting to the ceiling. At the centre of the bar was a much larger stage with two poles. Lounging around the room was a lot of girls. Most of them cats, all of them predators of some kind. They were in various states of dress, some just sitting around chatting in their underwear, although some were still fully, albeit scantily dressed.

"Nick…" Just started, trying not to stare at any of the girls "Do I want to know why you knew this was a strip club?"

"I told you when I first met you, Carrots. I know everyone."

He gave a little wave and grin to one of the few fox girls sitting around, and she waved back at him. Judy looked between them, not wanting to think about what that could mean, trying to keep her head down until they were at the stairs. The rhino unlocked the door for them and led them down.

"I imagine you'll be most interested in the camera pointed at the alleyway. Already took a look at it myself. Camera 9, file should be labelled with date and time in the computer."

They quickly found the file they were looking for, holding the footage from camera 9 the previous night. They fast forwarded through the first few hours, looking for when the bodies appeared. It wasn't hard to spot. A large white, windowless van pulled into the alleyway, and Judy quickly stopped the footage.

Two masked hippos quickly jumped from the back, started just tossing pieces of dead animal from the back, trying to unload them as quick as possible. It seemed like they weren't quite finished though when the side door opened, the tail and back end of a raccoon sticking out of it, although he was still facing inwards. As soon as they realized someone else was there though, the hippos stopped dumping, closing the van doors and peeling off down the alleyway. They were gone just in time for the raccoon to turn around and react in horror to the scene on the ground.

The two rewatched the scene a couple of times, Judy feeling nauseous just from seeing it over and over, but she was able to keep herself in control. Finally figuring they weren't going to get any more, Judy leaned back into a wall, closing her eyes and sighing.

"You going to be alright there, Carrots?"

She opened her eyes, nodding a little. "Going to be fine. Back up a little, see if you can get a screengrab that should the license plate well enough to read."

Nick reword the footage frame by frame, waiting to see if there would be a clear shot, and luckily, he managed to find one. Zooming in on the footage, it was pixelated, but clear enough to get what they thought were the digits off of it.

"Great work Nick. Keep looking through different footage, see if you can't get a better picture, I'm going to head upstairs, see if I can't get a clear radio signal to control and run the plate."

"You're the boss, Carrots."

Running upstairs, she opened the door to the basement, holding it upon. The soundcheck was going on in the background, but that was quiet enough that she was still able to chat to control. After the previous night she had started wearing her personal radio, unhooking it from her shoulder, she called in.

"Control, this is Hotel 85421"

"Hotel 8541, this is control, go ahead."

"I need ownership details on a license plate."

"Hold one second."

She had the chance to look around the room again as she waited for control to get the system up for running the plate. The same fox girl that Nick had waved to earlier gave her a little wave, and she was about to give an uncertain wave back when her radio crackled to life again.

"Go ahead, Hotel 8541"

"Plate number is Zulu, Yankee, Lima, Kilo, Fower, Seven, Fower."

"That's Zulu, Yankee, Lima, Kilo, Fower, Seven, Fower?"

"Correct."

"The vehicle is listed as a white van, owner Michael Tapiri, was reported as stolen two weeks ago, turned up destroyed early this morning. Burned to nothing but a frame. Is that all?"

"Yes, thank you control. Hotel 85421 Clear."

"Control Clear."

She groaned, bumping the back of her head against the metal door. Because of course, if they were almost caught, they would have gotten rid of the van. Of course that would leave them with basically no leads. A female voice, suddenly interrupted her thoughts.

"Umm… excuse me officer, but are you okay?"

Already in a bad mood, she couldn't help but snap at the person, eyes still closed.

"I'm fine! Why does everybody keep asking me that? I am fine. I am will be fine. I am fine."

Looking over at who asked the question, it was the same scantily clad fox girl that had just waved at her.

"Hey, sorry, just wanted to make sure. There's still some time before I have to be backstage. Figured I would come say hi to Nick's partner in crime- or the exact opposite these days I suppose."

She offered a hand over to Judy.

"I'm Carmina Volpe, but you'll probably just hear me called 'Vixxen' around here. It's stupid, but it sells."

Judy grabbed the offered hand, still slightly confused as to where this was coming from.

"Judy Hopps, ZPD, clearly. How exactly did you meet Nick?"

"Oh, Nick's just the kind of guy that everyone seems to know, you know what I mean? He lives in the same apartment block as me, and we've chatted a few times. He's shown up here once or twice, but he never seemed much into it, honestly. It was usually with Finnick."

Judy couldn't help feel a little relieved. What Nick did in his spare time was really his own business, but she would have been a little… disturbed? No, that wasn't quite right. Annoyed perhaps, that her partner was the kind of man who regularly attended strip clubs.

"Anyways," The fox interrupted her train of thought "It seems like you two are real busy, so I am going to let you get back to it. Besides, I need to head backstage soon. The doors are going to start opening any minute."

A quick goodbye followed, and Judy headed back down the stairs to find Nick going through camera after camera, looking for any angle that might help them, but seeming to turn up nothing of use. She took a seat in the chair next to his.

"Hey Fluff, that took a while, Control tell you anything good?"

"Well, we know where the van went. Unfortunately it was found this morning, nothing but a burned out husk."

"M-hmm, that wouldn't have taken as long as it did to find out. What else is there?"

"Well, I may have gotten into a quick little conversation with a friend of yours." It was Judy's turn to be able to put on a little grin.

"Ah. Carmina. She didn't tell you any embarrassing stories about me, did she?"

"Hmm? You, Nick Wilde, the suave fox, having embarrassing stories about your past? Shocking."

"Oh shush, Carrots." He gave her chair a little shove, sending it rolling down the little room. "Look, I'm just about done here, and if we've run out of leads, then it might just be best to copy the footage we have here and call it a night."

"Sounds like that might be for the best. Bogo did tell us to get a good night's sleep, and the van will be considered a crime scene already. We'll just let them know what we came up with."

As the two were packing up, they heard music, faint coming down the stairs, but surely plenty loud, coming from the main bar room, signaling that the night had started. Apparently, they really weren't going to take a night off just because a gruesome murder had turned up next to their club. Not on what could be a busy Saturday. Judy let out a little groan as she heard it

"What, a little bit of nudity still going to bother you, Carrots?"

Slightly annoyed that she didn't have a good comeback, he was right after all, she just walked upstairs and pushed the door open, Nick right on her heels, chuckling. Getting her back for talking with Carmina she assumed.

She couldn't totally help but look up occasionally though, mostly to navigate, but she did glance over briefly towards the main stage, where she saw none other than Carmina, halfway through a dance, already topless. She felt her face heating up, flinching slightly when she heard Nick whistle jokingly as she made her way out the door.

They quickly got back into the truck, Judy rolling the passenger window down, wanting the breeze, leaning back into her seat and closing her eyes again. It took a few moments, but she realized that Nick wasn't starting the car.

"Hey Judy?"

That got her attention, it was rare that he used her real name.

"Yeah Nick?"

"Well, I was wondering if you might want to come over tonight. Have a drink before you head home. Honestly I know I could use one."

She looked over and saw his drooping façade. He looked tired all of a sudden, his grin long gone. She wondered if maybe he just didn't want to be alone for a little while, off the job. She kind of felt that same way in truth, and she had no idea how much sleep she would be able to get anyways. She gave Nick as good a smile as she could.

"Sure thing! That sounds like a great idea."

Giving a weak smile back, Nick started the car.


End file.
